Day: September 20, 2025

US President Donald Trump’s push to retake Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, framed as a response to China’s nuclear build-up in Xinjiang, risks destabilising an already fragile region and could once again turn the war-torn nation into a flashpoint in the US-China rivalry, observers warn. Advertisement The historic Soviet-built base is located roughly 70km (43 miles) north of Kabul and less than 800km from Afghanistan’s border with the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in western China. It was America’s largest military installation in the country until its chaotic 2021 withdrawal, which paved…

When Ding Xiaohan, a software engineer from Shanghai, took her 18-year-old son to Japan for a weeklong holiday this summer, she did not hold back. Advertisement The 47-year-old spent freely as they explored the affluent neighbourhood near the Tokyo Tower and the tea-producing city of Shizuoka, splashing out on sushi lunches, barbecue dinners and dolls modelled on iconic Studio Ghibli anime characters. “Japanese food and merchandise are different, higher quality – like if you buy clothing it’s more comfortable,” Ding said. “I don’t think Japan is too expensive.” Chinese tourism…

US President Donald Trump’s summit in Alaska last month with Russian leader Vladimir Putin failed to revive long-stalled nuclear negotiations or advance efforts to preserve the last major arms control pact between Washington and Moscow, which is set to expire in February. Advertisement Trump’s subsequent push for trilateral “denuclearisation” talks involving China elicited a firm refusal from Beijing, underscoring challenges to extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) amid fears of a fresh nuclear arms race, analysts said. Following the summit, Beijing, with its long-standing policy of “no…

The White House claimed on Saturday that the US operations of TikTok will be spun off, its board will be mostly Americans and its algorithm will be controlled in the US, after President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping discussed a deal for the short video platform in a phone call on Friday. Advertisement The US unit of TikTok will be majority-owned and controlled by American investors under the deal to separate from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Saturday.…

Friday’s phone call between the leaders of China and the United States could deliver a marked – if fragile – improvement in stability in the world’s most consequential relationship, Chinese observers said. Advertisement However, they also sounded a note of caution. One analyst highlighted serious sources of friction, such as confrontations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, while another warned that US tariff threats over China’s purchase of Russian oil and potential American secondary sanctions could also hurt the positive momentum. In the nearly two-hour phone call…

The United States has stopped issuing official statements about the passage of its warships through the Taiwan Strait since Donald Trump returned to the White House – a move some analysts believe is designed to dampen down tensions with Beijing. Advertisement Such transits were announced regularly while Joe Biden was president, but since Trump’s return there have only been three known operations. Beijing has long complained about the “public hype” surrounding such operations, but despite the apparent low-profile retreat, some Chinese observers have described it as a “tactical” move with…

Advertisement But in a subsequent English-language post on X, which is barred in China, the Beijing-based tech unicorn – owner of short video platforms TikTok and Douyin – thanked both Xi and Trump “for their efforts to preserve TikTok in the United States”, adding that the company would “work in accordance with applicable laws to ensure TikTok remains available to American users”. Replacing “Chinese laws” with “applicable laws” in the English statement reflects the delicate balance ByteDance must maintain between the US and China to ensure that the TikTok deal…